Simulacra
by Sakon76
Summary: Despite having Bumblebee as a protector, Sam is still vulnerable to Decepticon attack within the halls of his university. Steps are taken to minimize this. Follows on from The Language of After
1. Hide and Seek

Leo first saw her at a frat party the week after he and Sam got back to Princeton. She was a Nordic goddess, as pale as ice with hair nearly as white as her skin spilling to her hips, where it was cut in a line so straight it must've been sighted by a laser. A wide silver collar radiated outward from her neck, looking like something futuristically Egyptian, and the white dress that floated away beneath it covered only the legal minimum of her lithe, writhing body. The only color _on_ her was her vivid blue-green eyes, half-shuttered behind her lashes as she writhed to the pounding techno music, grinding against the guy behind her.

Leo swallowed. And nudged his roommate to look in the chica's direction. "I think I just found the girl of my dreams," he said hoarsely.

Sam looked toward the dance floor and blinked. Even if he had Mikaela, no man was immune to something like that. She _was_ bringing sexy back. "Good luck. Just remember your last 'dream girl' tried to kill us both."

"That was a one-time thing!" Leo protested, eyes fast on the vision.

"Whatever. Good luck." Sam nudged him with one elbow toward the dance floor, and turned to go mingle elsewhere.

By the time Leo got through the crowd, though, the goddess and her dance partner had vanished, and no amount of searching turned her up.

Just his luck.

Simulacra: Hide and Seek  
by K. Stonham  
first released 25th June 2009

Sam blinked when the platinum blonde from the party showed up in Astronomy 101 the next day, shadowed by a guy who was clearly a boyfriend from the protective way he was acting. Unlike her, he looked completely average, with short brown hair and crystal blue eyes, wearing a camo t-shirt and blue jeans... and was built like a quarterback. The both of them met eyes with Sam, which he was getting used to by now--get your face plastered all over every news media in the world and people don't stop wondering why--but took seats two rows in front of him and Leo without bothering to ask Sam "Aren't you--?"

Which was good. Sam was getting very tired of having to say "No comment."

He looked at his roommate, whose gaze was fixed on the blonde like a starving man's on a buffet. "Leo," Sam warned quietly, "you say one word to her about 'heavenly bodies' and get me beaten up by her boyfriend, I swear to God himself that I'm going to ask my 'friends' to help me hide your body."

"Oh, that is so cheating."

"Whatever your dating plans are, leave me out of them." Sam was firm on this.

Then Professor Colan came in and the lecture started.

Sam--with the knowledge of the Allspark unfolding in his head these days--could barely keep himself from snorting at some points, and instead let himself continue scribing the Covenant into the notebook he'd designated for that purpose.

Thus occupied, it completely escaped his notice that Platinum and Jock found Colan's lecture as ridiculous as he did.

* * *

"Mira," Leo moaned ecstatically, collapsing backward onto his bed, miraculously unbruised. "Her name is Mira Lagerlof and she's rooming on the floor above us."

Sam looked over at the other bunk from where he was reading (rereading, actually, they'd covered it in CP English his junior year of high school) Hedda Gabler. "And her boyfriend?" he asked pointedly.

"Henry Deere." Leo frowned. "Rooming the floor below us. He's nice. Polite. He can't possibly be that clueless."

"Maybe he thinks you don't have a chance," Sam said sweetly.

"Bitch--!" Leo fumbled for something to throw and ended up lobbing his pillow at Sam, who batted it away effortlessly.

"And I thought you didn't poach," Sam said more seriously.

"Hey, chica's out in the wide world for the first time, coming out of a sheltered environment--you should hear her accent, man, she's clearly old money--it's practically my duty to show her that she's got options!"

A car horn interrupted what Sam was going to say next. A very _familiar_ car horn. Sounding from what sounded like directly underneath his and Leo's dorm window.

"Bumblebee," he interpreted for Leo's benefit, and headed for the door, followed by his curious roommate.

Sam had long since given up wondering how Bumblebee always, always knew where he was. A more suspicious mind like Simmons' might have postulated alien tracking devices implanted during opportune periods of unconsciousness. Sam simply knew that his alien guardian was innately attuned to his unique bioelectrical signature... indistinguishable as one among billions of humans, unless you knew and cared about it as closely as Bumblebee did.

Still, he was not expecting his closest friend to come visit bearing passengers.

"Mira?" Leo asked, quickly swiping a hand through his hair. "And Henry," he added as the other student got out of Bumblebee's passenger seat.

Sam's eyes darted between their two classmates and his car. "You... know each other?" he asked, trying to draw a bead on the situation without giving away things that he--and Leo--were still not allowed to talk about until the government made up their minds.

Bumblebee's radio clicked on. "You've got a friend in me," Randy Newman crooned.

"Right. Friends." Sam eyed the two humans. "Known each other long...?" he fished.

Henry smiled and took a few steps forward while Mira remained by Bumblebee's driver's door. "A few thousand years," he replied. His voice held a hint of a Midwestern twang. He held out a hand to Sam. "My name's Hound." Sam's gaze suddenly caught on the silver pendant Hound wore.

The Autobot symbol was intimately familiar, and Sam relaxed immediately, shaking Hound's hand with a smile. "Sam Witwicky," he introduced himself. "And I guess you've already met Leo."

"Yeah." Leo nodded at the other man.

"My partner Mirage," Hound said, gesturing at Mira. "We just got here."

"'Mirage'...?" Leo questioned, and Sam saw the penny start to drop for his roommate. "Wait, you're not?"

"Pretender-class infiltrators," Hound confirmed, though that probably didn't mean as much to Leo as it did to Sam, whose thoughts for a split-second swam with information about technorganic disguises and it would have been _really handy_ to have had that information two weeks ago....

"Like Alice," Sam needed to confirm.

"Flip Sides." Hound nodded.

"Wait wait wait... you're _robots_?" Leo stared first at Hound, then in increasing horror at Mirage. She gazed impassively back at him.

"*_dingdingding_* Give the man a prize and tell him what he's won!" the voice of a game show announcer came from Bumblebee's speakers.

"Shut it, buzzbot," Leo immediately retorted, glaring at the gleaming Camaro. Bumblebee's engine revved in response.

"Oh, knock it off, both of you," Sam interjected, glaring. He waited a moment until both subsided, then turned his attention back to Hound. "So no offense or anything, Hound, but... why are you here?"

"Prime," Mirage said, speaking for the first time, and Leo was right, her accent _did_ speak of breeding and old money, "asked us to guard you in the places that Bumblebee can't go."

"The Decepticons have already tried to get at you here once," Hound elaborated. "No one wants that to happen again."

With everything in Sam's head, and especially with the government not yet having handed down or forced some exception to the freshman no-car rule for Sam... yeah. He could run, but fighting alien robots wasn't his strength. "No argument here," he agreed. He looked beyond Hound to Bumblebee. "You okay with this, Bumblebee?"

"Yeah yeah yeah yeah!" a rock singer screamed from the radio.

"He is still your primary guardian," Mirage spoke, sounding like she was choosing her words carefully. "We are merely... assistants. Adjutants, if you will."

"Actually," Hound added, grinning, "I was wondering if I could ask for your help with that English Lit. assignment."

* * *

Lying on his bed in the dark, much later that evening, Leo tried not to think about the fact that Mira's room was right above his. Or that she was probably in there right now, wearing nothing but a skimpy nightie as she went to bed... if she was wearing anything at all. Did robots wear anything to sleep? Did robots even need to sleep?

"You're thinking something perverted," Sam's voice came from across the room.

"Man, I am not! How do you know?"

"You're breathing," Sam replied in a reasonable tone. Leo fought down the urge to throw his pillow at Sam again. It might not get thrown back.

"She's hot! Even if she is from another planet."

"She's a robot, Leo. Remember Alice? The tentacle bitch Decepticon who tried to kill us not two weeks ago?"

"Tried to kill _you_," Leo pointed out.

"Fine. Go ahead. Try for gasoline kisses. See if I care," his roommate retorted.

"Don't think I haven't noticed how you and Mikaela look at that car of yours," Leo rejoined. "Man, don't be accusing _me_ of interspecies without taking a good look in the mirror first!"

There was a moment of silence. As it stretched on, Leo began to worry that maybe he'd crossed the line. "Sam--"

"I'll tell you this," Sam's voice cut levelly across his. "They live a hundred times as long as we do, or more. They're strong and powerful in ways we can only imagine. But their sparks are just as fragile as human hearts, and as easy to break. If you fuck things up, the repercussions are going to go on for a lot longer than you're ever going to be alive, Leo." There was a minute of silence before Sam tacked on, "And if you're just after pussy... they don't have the same anatomy we do."

"They don't?" Leo asked, almost whimpered, eyes wide in the darkness.

"Good night, Leo."

He stayed awake a long time, staring into the darkness up at the ceiling and the room above him.


	2. Seeing and Believing

Mirage was exquisite and high-class no matter what culture they were in, no matter what forms their shells took. She always moved with the innate grace of a dancer and never passed up an opportunity to study local forms of both dance and swordplay, no matter how distasteful she found the local culture. She was beautiful, and fast, and deadly.

"She's at the fencing club," Hound answered Leo's question, looking up at the Hispanic human from the biology text he'd been perusing.

It was almost amusing how quickly Leo made his excuses and vanished from the dorm room he shared with Sam.

"You do realize," Sam asked as Hound fought down his smile, "that's he's trying to make a play for Mirage?"

Hound shrugged. "He's welcome to. If Mirage wants him, I certainly can't stop her."

"Wait," Sam protested. "I thought the two of you were together...?"

"We are," Hound confirmed. "Have been practically from the moment we came out of our gestation chambers. We were... does 'built for one other' sound too strange in English?"

"We'd say 'made for one other,' but I think that's missing some of the connotations," Sam answered.

Hound nodded. "It doesn't mean we're not open to interfacing with appropriate individuals as they come along," he explained. "Mirage and I fit each other. If she wants to dally with Leo, that's not going to challenge what we are to one another. It can't."

"So, you have an open relationship, then?"

Hound took a second to cross-reference the term on the humans' World Wide Web, and nodded again in affirmation. "Sort of. Though I think that's missing some of the connotations." He echoed Sam's grin, then went back to studying.

It was less than five minutes later that Sam vehemently slammed his physics textbook closed. "Agh, the man's a moron!" he groused, flopping sideways onto the floor where he stared up at the ceiling. "The truth is all the highest human tech and scientific knowledge is like baby talk to you guys."

Hound shrugged helplessly. It _was_ only the truth and, having the knowledge of the Allspark in his brain, Sam already knew that.

"I'm going to have to switch to an arts major just to resist strangling half my professors, aren't I?" Sam groaned.

"Why do you think I'm nominally studying your anthropology?" Hound retorted.

Sam glared at him. "You suck. I didn't have all this in my head until after I got here, you know."

"Yes you did," Hound replied implacably. "It was just dormant." He cocked his head to one side, considering the human teenager stretched out atop the thin polyester carpeting of the dorm room's floor. "Has it... has it occurred to you that maybe you're becoming one of us in a human body?"

Sam's expression betrayed that this was a new thought to him, and one he maybe wasn't entirely comfortable with yet. Hound smiled wistfully. "I may not have been on this planet long, but maybe... if you're becoming one of us, maybe it's not impossible for some of us to become some of you."

Simulacra: Seeing and Believing  
by K. Stonham  
first released 28th June 2009

She set down the sabre and removed her mask, shaking out her cranial filaments--hair, Mirage reminded herself--while internally counting out a thousand digits of the square root of two before turning to face Sam Witwicky's roommate.

Leonardo Spitz, she reminded herself. Another human who knew the truth of her kind.

"I am not interested," she told him flatly. "It would be better if you turned your attention to another."

"Look," he said, "I just wanna show you around, make sure you're having a good time, you know? You come from a long way away, I just wanna make sure you're doing okay here. In a, um, foreign place and all."

His words unintentionally brought up memory files of all she'd lost. Grimly, Mirage locked down the memories of soaring crystal towers, clean and cool in their elegance, aching in their absence. Her home was gone. Hound was her home now. The only home she had left.

Turning from the human, she walked away, and as a door swung closed behind her, Mirage disappeared.

Leo, running after her, ran right past her and never saw her.

* * *

There had had to be certain rules set down, of course. Cybertronians just didn't get some things, though to be fair Hound seemed to be picking them up faster than even Bumblebee. Mirage didn't seem to care, but she dutifully stayed within what Sam outlined as boundaries. Bathrooms, for example. Guys just didn't go to the bathroom in groups the way girls did. And there were certain bodily functions humans didn't talk about. Cybertronians, on the other hand, didn't seem to even have a concept of body shyness. Just another one of those things that made humans seem provincial and backwards compared to their new intergalactic neighbors.

"So you don't have sex?" Leo pressed as Sam really, really wished his roommate could drop the conversation and think with the big head instead of the little one.

Hound shook his head, answering good-naturedly as seemed to be his default setting. "We never procreated the way humans do. Never needed to."

"We built or commissioned protoforms and took them to the Allspark, where they were nourished and given life," Mirage said, looking at the wall from where she sat at Sam's desk. She sounded like she was remembering something from long ago. "Some of the builders were true artists."

Hound laughed a little. "Yours definitely was. Mirage," he explained to Sam and Leo, "was built by Sunstreaker, one of Cybertron's greatest protoform constructors. You've met his brother, actually... Sunstreaker was Sideswipe's twin."

"What happened to him?" Sam asked. He'd only met Sideswipe the once, after Egypt, but he'd spent far too much time with Skids and Mudflap, which had left him with the impression that Cybertronian twins split a single I.Q. between them. Sideswipe had seemed fairly normal, though. For an Autobot, Sam amended to himself, which wasn't always saying that much.

A shrug. "No one really knows, not even Sideswipe. So hopefully he's still alive and out there somewhere."

"It will be very hard on Sideswipe if he ever finds that his brother has passed on," Mirage said quietly.

"So you just build one another?" Leo asked, harping on his singular point like a dog with a bone. "No cuddling, no snuggles, no love and affection, just a workshop and some tools? That's gotta suck as a way of reproduction!"

"Your species," Mirage snapped, "places far too much value on reproduction as the only means of intimacy."

"Oh yeah?" Leo shot to his feet. "Well prove it, cyberbabe, 'coz I ain't seen nothing from you yet that proves you're more than a silicon ice cube. _Nothing_."

Mirage's eyes narrowed, and Sam was about to call for a time-out or something when she said silkily, "Hound."

Watching the other Autobot's mouth curve up in a smile, Sam got a sinking feeling in his stomach. "Um, guys," he tried. "Door open? Dorm rules?"

Hound directed that smiling gaze to him. "They won't see a thing," he promised,

"That I don't want them to see," another Hound, leaning against the wall by the open door, continued.

"Trust me," said a third Hound standing behind Mirage.

Sam's eyes widened and Leo's practically bugged out as all three Hounds winked and the latter two winked out of existence.

"Holograms," the real Hound cheerfully explained, standing and moving behind Mirage, who still sat at Sam's desk.

"Um," Sam hedged with a glance at the door, beyond which moved various other students unsuspecting of the alien sex (or whatever it was) that was about to happen in his dorm room. "I think I'm too young to be seeing this...."

"Not according to your mom, you aren't," Leo said sotto voce, staring unabashedly at the aliens.

"Shut up," Sam hissed.

"Sam," Hound said simply, "it's all right. Trust me."

Whichever of the Autobots had told Hound that Sam's weak point was trusting them, Sam was going to kill them. Bumblebee, probably. In which case, Sam was going to kill his best friend. Because having been asked by an Autobot to trust them, there was no way now he could leave his dorm room or even look away. He owed this to them, to himself. The die had been cast and the last bridge crossed long ago, and even if he did not know where his path led, Sam was committed to the alien strangers.

Quietly, and still a little bit uncomfortable, he sat and watched.

Unpleasant memories of an unpleasant event surfaced briefly as two inch-thick articulated cords emerged from Hound's back, gleaming silver in the sunlight as they arched towards Mirage.

_--weight that was more than weight holding him down, unrelenting grip clenching his wrists painfully tight, a tongue not pliable but hard going literally down his throat--_

Sam swallowed against the ghost of sensation and concentrated on breathing, pushing away the bad memory, concentrating instead on how Hound was looking at Mirage, gentle and loving, and how Mirage's expression melted into something tender as she turned her arms hands-up so that the tips of Hound's... tentacles plugged neatly into the underside of her wrists. How she shivered and her facade of humanity flickered for an instant, revealing a blue-silver mechanoid, gracefully built, underneath.

This was not him, not Alice, Sam was reminded as a matching pair of cables emerged winglike from Mirage's shoulder blades, looping playfully around Hound's wrists before connecting with the other Pretender.

And Hound's seeming failed utterly at that, revealing a green and silver Autobot beneath the humanoid exterior. His optics were half-dimmed, gaze directed entirely at his partner. Sam could almost feel the data streams being transferred between them, silent and rushing and as stimulating as anything tactile might be to a human. Mirage smiled wickedly at something and Hound shuddered and choked static. She leaned back luxuriantly, eyes closing, and one of his cables stroked the exposed pseudo-skin of her neck. Hound growled a low spate of Cybertronian--which Sam was _not_ going to translate for Leo--and Mirage shivered, arching distressingly, her hands curling into fists.

"Hound--" she whimpered in their language.

Hound's cables flexed, and Mirage's voice broke into a shattering of sound, her seeming dropping entirely.

She was as beautiful in her Cybertronian form as she was in her human seeming, Sam thought distantly, watching streams of what looked like liquid lightning play across her writhing silver form, feeding across her and Hound's cables to to roll over and around and into his body as well.

This was nothing like Alice.

This, Sam realized, was love, and it was beautiful.

* * *

Leaving Sam and Leo's room, where the two humans were likely still processing their exposure to Cybertronian-style intimacy, Hound escorted his partner to the stairwell at the end of the floor, where his path led down and hers up.

"You know," he invited her, "my roommate's away tonight."

"And?" Mirage replied, seeming even more relaxed after an interface than usual. He wondered if the presence of the human-Allspark hybrid had anything to do with that. Or, for that matter, Leo's presence. Mirage had never displayed any bio-exhibitionist tendencies before, but perhaps this planet and its people (and the wealth of information on their sexual preferences and kinks available on their World Wide Web) were beginning to affect his partner after all.

"We could try it human-style," Hound murmured, offered, into her audio receptor.

Mirage's gaze slid sideways to meet his. "You," she stated, "are a pervert with low tastes."

"And you love it," he pleasantly rejoined, and then escorted his not unwilling partner down to his dorm room.

* * *

A/N: It didn't seem so bad at the time (at least not in comparison with what was going on in the rest of the film), but thinking about it later... Alice was attempting to rape Sam. Which the Sam-in-my-head is more shaken by than multiple Decepticons attempting to kill him across multiple films (and sometimes succeeding). Because it's a much more personal, intimate crime. It's stealing, ripping away, something which should only ever be given. So that came out in the writing.


	3. Ends and Means

The first few notes of a hard rock song betrayed an incoming call. A bronzed hand, glistening with suntan lotion, reached lazily across the sand and picked up the cellphone, pressing one button.

"Hey, gorgeous," Sam Witwicky's voice greeted his girlfriend.

"Hey, Sam," Mikaela replied, smiling a little, her eyes closed against the sun even behind her glasses.

"How's the weather there?"

"Eighty and wonderful. How's Princeton?"

"Thirty and sleeting," Sam replied without even needing to glance out his window. "Tell me you're on the beach."

"Mmm, I am."

"Wearing that bikini that weighs less than my imagination?"

"You know it."

"I'm leaving for the airport in fifteen minutes."

"I may still be on the beach when you get here."

"Bumblebee's probably going to join you the minute we touch ground."

"And you're not?"

"You know me, always working."

"It'll just have to be me and Bumblebee, then, catching the rays all alone... without you...." Mikaela's voice invited Sam to picture all sorts of deliciously naughty things his girlfriend and best friend/car might get up to in his absence.

"Well, maybe I could squeeze in a few hours," Sam hedged, smiling, as he shoved a last pair of socks in his duffel. An irritated-sounding horn honked from below his window. "Ride's here, gotta go. See you when I touch ground."

"Love you, Sam."

"Love you, Mik." Sam hung up the phone one-handed and zipped the duffel closed. "Oh, hey Leo," he called out as his roommate walked back in from the den of iniquity known as their computer room. Sam fumbled for a gift-wrapped box on his bed and handed it over. "Merry Christmas."

"Oh, thanks, man," Leo replied, and dug momentarily around under his own bed, pulling out a small squashy gift-wrapped packet of his own, handing it to Sam. "Here you go. Merry Christmas."

"Cool. Thanks." Sam eyed the gift for a minute, then tore open the paper just as Leo opened his. "What the--" he said, taking it out.

"Wicked," Leo said, eyes wide in appreciation at the decommissioned Sector Seven manual Sam had managed to finagle out of Simmons. "Thanks, man!"

"Good for training to be a spy," Sam replied. "Leo, where did you _get_ this?" He incredulously held up a yellow and gray stuffed toy that looked suspiciously like his best friend.

Leo shrugged. "Chica I know online. I sent her a few pics and asked her to make one up. You like?"

"It is _awesome_," Sam replied, delighted with the present. "I can't wait to show it off." Bumblebee's horn honked again. "Anyhow," he said, stuffing the plushie into his duffel and hastily tossing the wrapping into a waste basket, "I gotta go. Have a good Christmas, man."

"You too. See you in a few weeks!"

And with that Sam was out the door and down the stairs to where three Autobots waited for him, all four of them eager to depart from the winter weather for a couple weeks of sun, sand, and top-secret government meetings.

* * *

Mikaela set down the phone and rolled over onto her back, wanting to toast evenly on all sides. Next to her, Chromia and Arcee soaked up the sun's energy as well. And trundling down the sand from the mess hall came a small blue bot bearing a tray that held a single glass of frosty pink beverage.

"Your drink, my Goddess," Wheelie announced with a flourish as he reached her.

"Thank you," Mikaela replied to her robotic minion, taking the drink. Sipping at the fruit punch, she closed her eyes and concentrated on soaking up the warmth of Diego Garcia.

Simulacra: Ends and Means  
by K. Stonham  
first released 30th July 2009

"--the President will be stopping to inspect the joint US/United Kingdom military base on the island of Diego Garcia on his way back from the conference, and then is expected to return to Washington to spend Christmas with his family," the broadcaster concluded before Bumblebee clicked the radio off.

Somehow the cargo hold of the plane seemed too big even with Sam and Bumblebee and Hound and Mirage and the three NEST members who'd been waiting for the four of them at the airport. So after being polite and ambassadorial and conversational for a bit, Sam had retreated into Bumblebee's cab. The twenty-plus hour flight between New Jersey and Diego Garcia hadn't been fun the first time he'd done it. And in a few more days loomed the prospect of the flight back to Los Angeles, which was even longer.

What he wouldn't have given for Jetfire and his space bridge capabilities, Sam thought wistfully, lying down across the pseudo-leather front seat.

* * *

He was woken by the thrum of Bumblebee's engine starting, vibrating the seat beneath him. Groggily Sam sat up, rubbing the space between his eyebrows, trying to blink consciousness back into his life.

Sunlight spilled in through the open cargo bay door.

They were there already?

"Good day sunshine," Paul McCartney sang from Bumblebee's speakers. Sam sighed a little in exasperation. It was too damn early for cheery Autobot wakeup calls, whatever the time was local time. He needed a bottle of water to wash out the taste in his mouth, and a couple aspirin to kill the headache he could already feel forming. In that order.

A bottle of water and a packet of pills were thrust in the open driver's side window.

Sam looked up at Agent Simmons, who was smiling at him, something that had never yet failed to set off Sam's warning bells.

"Good morning, Mister Witwicky!" Simmons said far too brightly. "Welcome back to Diego Garcia!"

"Just so you know," Sam said conversationally, taking the water--blessedly cool--and the foil packet, "I despise you all for being morning people."

Simmons' grin continued unabated, while behind him Hound leaned against the plane's hull and Mirage leaned against Hound, waiting for the rest of their party before disembarking. There was a certain Cybertronian advantage, Sam thought to himself as he popped pills and took a swig of the water, in not needing more than a half-hour of defragging time a week. On the other hand, he wondered if they got bored in the middle of the night, living as they did on a planet where the natives spent a third of their lives unconscious.

"So," Simmons asked as Sam got out of the car, "how'd the amateur like his Christmas present?"

"Loved it," Sam replied. He smirked, half awake now and heading up. "Wait'll I show you what he got me."

* * *

"You," Ratchet said archly, looming as only a giant robot could, "have not been getting enough sleep."

"I slept the entire fragging plane ride here," Sam retorted, glaring.

"One day's good rest does not make up for three months of bad habits," Ratchet countered.

"It's called _college_, Ratchet. And youth. This is the time when I'm supposed to burn the candle at both ends," Sam snapped.

"You just be careful that you don't burn yourself out," the doctor replied, pointing one finger at Sam warningly. "We need you. And as for you," he said, rounding on the black-striped Camaro, "I don't particularly care for what that road salt's doing to your undercarriage...."

Bumblebee played a sound clip of someone blowing a raspberry.

"Don't you give me the raspberry," Ratchet warned. He took a step threateningly forward, only to have Bumblebee flee the hangar so fast he left tread marks on the concrete. Major Lennox didn't quite manage to muffle his snort of amusement as Ratchet straightened and sighed. "Right, where's he gone to?" the medic asked Sam.

"Why am I supposed to be able to track him?" Sam asked rhetorically. "Probably the beach with Mikaela."

"Well, sun won't do him any harm, and unlike some other bots I could name, Bumblebee has enough sense not to try swimming...."

"Twins?" Sam asked.

Ratchet nodded. "Twins."

"So," Sam said, "not to change the subject, but aren't I supposed to get briefed or something about whatever it is I'm supposed to talk to the President about?"

"Prime and Ironhide are on their way," Ratchet replied. He looked at Lennox. "Do you wish to be present for this, Major?"

Lennox snorted again. "There are a few points I'd like to add to what I'm pretty sure is on your list, without going through the appropriate channels."

Sam grinned. "I solemnly swear that I am up to no good, and shall name no names," he promised.

* * *

"The dossiers," the woman in a sharp suit said, handing a manila folder to the darker-skinned man in an equally sharp suit. He thanked her, and opened the folder to the sheaf of papers within.

Two years ago, before he'd been elected to the highest office, he never would have dreamed of the images that lay before him. Oh, he'd suspected some kind of cover-up in the Mission City incident, and the way the attack on the Qatar base had never been properly followed up upon and died a quick death had been... suspicious.

But giant alien robots waging their war first on American soil, and now globally... it seemed like something out of a kids' cartoon. Not something real. Not something that had been the first thing he'd been briefed about between winning the election and taking office. It was something he nearly hadn't been able to wrap his head around, thinking he'd been having a massive practical joke played upon him. It had taken all of Keller's convincing to keep him from hyperventilating when it had finally clicked that what they were telling him was _real_.

Let the political pundits wonder why he hadn't appointed a new Secretary of Defense. After finding out the truth of Mission City, there was no way he was letting the incumbent off of his staff.

Sighing, he began paging through the stapled dossiers. Optimus Prime. Ancient leader of a powerful race. Ironhide, his weapons specialist. Ratchet, their mechanic/medic. Bumblebee, a scout assigned to guard one of their first human contacts. Sideswipe, a combat instructor. And on down through the ranks of the small squadron until it got to Skids and Mudflap, who were noted as twins--and how did that even work for robots?--and not exactly having the highest possible processor power.

Major William Lennox, U.S. Army, head of the team that had survived Qatar and Mission City and subsequently formed the core of NEST. Chief Master Sergeant Robert Epps, U.S. Air Force, same background. Agent Seymour Simmons, formerly of the disbanded Sector Seven, now reinstated as Chief Intel Officer for NEST after his efforts in the Egypt incident. And on down through the ranks to two non-enlisted teenagers from Pasadena, California, the first contacts the aliens had made on Earth, each with an Autobot (or two, in the case of the girl) living with them.

President of the United States of America or not, he still didn't feel ready for this.

* * *

"Okay, one question," Sam said finally. "How level are we being about Pretenders?"

Optimus Prime tilted his head at the boy. "You feel their presence will be a problem?"

"Not so much presence as disclosure," Sam answered. "I mean, it's one thing for you guys to look like things that are entirely mechanical. It's something else in the human psyche to have robots looking and acting so much like us that we can't tell the difference."

"That," Ironhide said, "makes no sense."

"Look up the Terminator movies, big guy," Lennox replied. "It's bad enough for the familiar to suddenly become alien and dangerous. When it's something that we trusted to _be_ us suddenly attacking us, it's even worse."

"You are... displeased with Hound and Mirage's assignment?" Optimus asked Sam.

"No! They're great," Sam refuted. "But I'm not the average human anymore. You want to give me bodyguards against Decepticon Pretenders, I'm all for it. Other humans, _normal_ humans... you guys aren't going to be in hiding forever, no matter what the governments of this planet think. I'm just trying to figure out how it's going to be best to handle it when everything comes out. Starting now."

"I will say this," Epps added. "Even though my papa told me it's better to ask forgiveness than permission, most of the time it's better to not need forgiveness." He glanced at Lennox. "_Most_ of the time," he emphasized, grinning.

"You hide the Pretenders and sooner or later it _will_ come out," Lennox said. "And when it does, people will wonder what else you're hiding."

"Add to that the fact that Decepticons also have Pretenders," Ratchet agreed. "It's probably best to let the humans know the full extent of what they're up against from the start."

"Um," Sam hedged. "Considering that includes combiners like Devastator... can we maybe _ease_ people into how big you guys can get?"

"Amen," Epps agreed. "That fucker was scary as shit, and considering I hang with you guys, that's saying something."

* * *

Air Force One's landing on Diego Garcia was textbook. The salutes of the soldiers as the President came down the boarding staircase, likewise. "Welcome to Diego Garcia, sir," Will Lennox greeted the President as the ladies and gentlemen of the Secret Service fanned out protectively around their charge.

"Good to be here, Major Lennox," the President replied, looking around the bright atoll base. He huffed a quick, almost nervous, sigh. "Well, let's get things started, shall we?"

"Yes, sir." With a minimum of ceremony, Will escorted the world leader and his entourage to the hanger most used for human-Cybertronian interaction.

It was empty except for a teenage boy who turned around to look at them as they all approached. A brief flash of surprise crossed the President's face, then was gone as he removed his sunglasses. "Allow me to introduce you--" Will started.

"Sam Witwicky," Sam curtailed his introduction, offering his hand, "Mister President."

"A pleasure to meet you," the President replied, shaking Sam's hand. "Princeton University, right?"

"Yes, sir. And... by request of Optimus Prime, human-Autobot liaison."

The older man blinked, taken aback. Will guessed that hadn't been in whatever files he possessed on Sam. Come to think of it, there were several things about Sam that probably weren't in those files because no one in the know was interested in compromising the teenager's life and relative freedom. "That's new... for how long, son?"

"Since September," Sam replied, and there was no mistaking him for a kid anymore.

"You're a little young to take on such a heavy role," the President observed quietly.

"No, sir, I'm not," Sam replied. "I'm old enough to fight for my planet, watch my friends die doing the same, and to give my life for it. I've _earned_ the right to stand between the Autobots and humans. The hard way."

A moment's silence. "And if it comes down to it, whose side will you be on?" the President asked quietly.

"Theirs," Sam replied without hesitating. "Because I've maybe only known them for two years, but I've _never_ seen them betray the core values their nation was founded on."

The President was very still, very silent.

"Every history text I've ever read says America was based on the right to freedom," Sam said carefully, quietly. "We became a nation, and a world power, by rebelling against tyranny and injustice. We took in the weak, the oppressed, the different, and made their strength part of our own. There's a statue in New York Harbor. Its inscription says 'Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!' We were a nation of freedom and hope. And you sent _Galloway_ here, to dictate to the alien refugees who were fighting on our behalf." His voice was quiet, lethal. Pissed off.

"The choice of Director Galloway--"

"You would have sacrificed those fighting for our freedom from tyranny for the sake of political expediency," Sam cut across the Leader of the Free World's words. "I'm not a soldier. I don't work for you. But I can tell you this: your representative hamstrung every effort to keep us free of Decepticon enslavement and annihilation, and it is certainly no thanks to him that this planet survived finding out what was really in that pyramid in Giza." Sam's gaze was ice. "I would respectfully request that you choose your next representative more wisely. Mister President."

The President continued silent for a moment. Then his shoulders folded down a little. "I screwed up," he admitted. Sam started to say something, but he held up his hand. "You had your say, Sam, let me have mine. I screwed up. The buck stops here. Your alien friends? They scare me. And that's not a good reaction for me, for anyone, to have. It clouds... clear thinking. I thought Galloway could make things all neat and tidy, keep the genie in its bottle. I was wrong, and you're right, the entire planet nearly paid the price for that."

"Hard to put a genie back in the bottle once it's opened, sir," Lennox opined.

"I know, Major." The President's eyes were fast on Sam's. "Now, I need to get over this fear so I can deal clearly with this in the future. And I think you're just the man to help me with that. Am I right?"

Sam's smile was genuine. "I think we can manage that, Mister President." And obviously he had some trick up his sleeve that Will didn't know about, or else the Autobots just had very good ears, because they began rolling in as if on cue. "Let me introduce you to the Autobots."


	4. Space and Time

The introductions were going well, Sam thought, and the President was slowly losing his innate human fear of talking with someone who was almost five times his height, thousands of times his mass, older than dirt, and bristling with weaponry beyond anything the human race had yet developed. Optimus Prime just had that effect on people.

"You know," Sam muttered sotto voce to Lennox, "maybe we should get Optimus to, like, meet with the Pope or the Dalai Lama or something."

"Oh dear Lord, the images..." Lennox murmured back, sharing a grin with Sam. Ratchet merely rolled his optics at them. Lennox beckoned the medic closer. "So, do I want to ask where the twins are?"

Ratchet's look was as innocent and guileless as someone twenty feet tall and made of metal could manage. "I have no idea where the twins may have gotten to, Major, pair of miscreants that they are."

"Mm-hmm." Lennox was unimpressed. "And if I asked Ironhide the same question...?"

"Ask no questions," Ratchet replied, "and you will be told no lies."

"I still say," Ironhide rumbled, "that we should leave them there and use them for target practice later."

"Isn't there something in the Autobot code about the rights of sentient beings?" Sam asked pointedly, raising an eyebrow.

"I'm not sure the two of them count," Ironhide countered, and the four of them shared a chuckle.

The low sound caught the attention of the President and he glanced away from Optimus Prime to see the two humans and two aliens laughing at a shared joke, at ease in one another's company. His words faltered to a stop, and the alien leader looked to the side too to see what had caught the man's attention. After a moment, the President of the United States of America spoke again. "'The only thing we have to fear is fear itself'," he murmured to himself. After a moment he looked back up at the giant alien robot. "Humans have... always had a hard time accepting things different from them. We have all these tendencies. Racism. Sexism. Classism," he listed off.

"I have noticed that," Optimus Prime agreed with a slight nod.

"We're xenophobes," the President said bluntly, "and I apologize on behalf of myself, and my fellow humans, for that. Your people deserve better from mine. You deserve better from me."

"We are strangers here," Optimus observed. "We will take what is given. To ask for more is not our way."

"If you don't ask for more, you may not ever get it," the President replied. "We've learned that lesson too many times over to forget it."

"Nonetheless." Optimus' tone was dismissive. "Trust is earned, not given."

The President took another look at the four friends, two pairs of beings as different from each other as could be. "Let me earn yours," he responded, turning back to the being that was his ally. "Let's talk disclosure... and integration."

Simulacra: Time and Space  
by K. Stonham  
first released 5th July 2009

The classy Camaro that pulled quietly inside the hangar did not go unnoticed, nor did the three humans and the miniature Autobot that spilled from its interior, nor were the pair of riderless motorcycles that trailed them overlooked. Sam excused himself and made a beeline to the girlfriend he hadn't seen in person (ironically, they'd last seen one another on this same atoll) for nearly three months.

"Hi," Mikaela said quietly, almost shyly, as their fingers interlaced.

"You look great," Sam said, inhaling the scents of seawater and coconut suntan lotion off her tanned skin.

"You look like you need more sleep," she rejoined, smudging a thumb delicately beneath his eye.

Sam rolled his eyes. "Yes, Ratchet," he responded. That made Mikaela laugh, and her laugh made him smile.

* * *

Hound watched the obvious affection between the human couple with a smile of his own. Mirage was never so publicly affectionate, but that was to be expected given the culture of the Towers where she'd been created and educated.

A scent he hadn't expected caught his attention, dragging it away from Sam and Mikaela. Mirage's fingers slipped in his, the human gesture hiding the way the circuitry in the tips of their fingers connected.

**_Do you--_** Mirage asked.

**_Yes,_** Hound replied, breathing cautiously, attempting to triangulate a position, a person, an object, from among overlapping and distorting EM fields, scents, echoes.... **_There._**

Mirage's hand slipped out from his, their fingertips looking as human as ever.

* * *

The stunning blonde walked calmly, smoothly, toward the President, drawing more than a few glances at her lithe form and the way her hips swayed. A Mona Lisa smile graced her lips as she drew near. The Autobots seemed unconcerned, but the Secret Service kept a wary eye on her nonetheless. That changed as she paused before one of them, said something that sounded like a modem-static question, and suddenly had a sword in her hand that she plunged through the man's head even as he reached for his gun.

Two bodyguards had the President behind them before the man even fell. The rest of the Secret Service detail and half the military present in the hanger had their guns trained on the blonde even as she retracted the blade _into her hand_ and looked calmly up at Optimus Prime.

"Phil?" one of the black-suited women asked, kneeling by the fallen agent. Her eyes widened and she recoiled, seeing blue sparks and circuitry instead of red blood welling from his wound. "Jesus!"

The man's seeming flickered and vanished, leaving the frame of a dead android on the ground instead.

"Your friend is most likely dead," Mirage told the woman. Weapons were slowly being lowered as the truth of the situation sunk in. "When or how, I could not guess." She looked up at the President, standing where he did on the platform that placed humans eye-to-optic with Optimus Prime. "Your security has been compromised."

Wheelie vrrred up to the fallen figure, examining it closely. "Oh, hey, I know this guy," he reported up to Optimus Prime. "Name a' Buzzsaw. He works for Soundwave." As Wheelie himself once had. And if Soundwave or any other Decepticon caught the little traitor... Wheelie was not brave enough to contemplate that fate. "Nice work taking him out," Wheelie complimented Mirage, who looked down at him impassively. "He ain't so nice. Or wasn't, I guess." He kicked a wheel gingerly against the dead Decepticon's shoulder.

"Mirage," Optimus introduced the hunter to the President. "And her partner Hound," he said, gesturing at the other human-seeming Autobot who approached.

"...I didn't know you could look like us, too," the President slowly said, considering the pair that had just exposed and dispatched a spy so close to him.

"It is a rare gift, but there are a few among us who possess it."

Agent Simmons didn't take his eyes off of Mirage as he put the safety back on his piece and put it away. "You know," he remarked to no one in particular, "I think I'm in love."

* * *

It was nearly twenty-four hours later before Sam finally, finally found himself on the pristine beach of Diego Garcia for a few hours, alone but for his girlfriend and best friend. They'd given even Wheelie the slip, shamelessly foisting the small bot off onto Optimus, Hound, and Mirage under the pretense of Wheelie needing to brief them in full about Soundwave's other symbiotes.

And Sam was resolutely not thinking about the fact that he had seen Mirage leaving Simmons' room at an obscene hour of the morning. Because that was just wrong in so many ways, beginning with Simmons having sex and ending somewhere around the fact that Sam's roommate was apparently uncannily and uncomfortably like the agent, given that they both wanted to bang the Pretender. So, no. Sam was not thinking about that at all because it would ruin his vacation if he did.

Therefore, he admired the lack of tan lines Mikaela was displaying for his and Bumblebee's edification as they all caught rays and relaxed and just _talked_ the way they really couldn't over internet chats, not with creepy Decepticons still possibly lurking in orbit and intercepting transmissions.

"And fortunately we managed to haul Leo's ass out of the place before he ended up with both a daisy _and_ a kitten tattooed on it," Sam concluded his story. Mikaela was bright-eyed with repressed snickers and Bumblebee (who'd been away at the time of said event) was pounding the ground with one fist, shaking with silent laughter.

"Oh, that's classic," Mikaela finally managed. "You're making me wish I was out there with you."

"Any time you want to join me, babe," Sam repeated his standing offer.

"I'll think about it," she repeated her standing refusal. "So," she asked, lying on her side and tracing a finger down Sam's arm, blue eyes meeting his, "does Leo have any good stories about _you_ getting falling-down drunk? Or I guess I should ask Hound."

"Leo _wishes_," Sam rebutted. "I've got too much work to do to get stupidly drunk. Though," he temporized, "if I ever do get that drunk, I know what tattoos I'd want to get."

"No kittens on your ass?" Mikaela asked.

"Here, kitty, kitty," Bumblebee chimed in.

"Ha. No." Sam ran fingers across Mikaela's shoulder blades. "'No Sacrifice, No Victory' right across here in black Gothic script like a pair of wings."

"Ooh, nice," she said. Bumblebee agreed, applauding. "And the other one?"

"Um. Other one?" Sam asked, suddenly having his brain kick into gear and trying for a poker face.

Except that his poker face apparently still sucked. "Sam, you said 'tattoos'," Mikaela chided. "Plural. Give."

"Um." Sam glanced at Bumblebee, then looked back down at the sand. "I'd want an Autobot insignia," he not-quite-mumbled.

Mikaela didn't seem to see anything wrong with this, though Bumblebee jolted straighter in surprise. "Where?"

"Um. Here." He brushed fingers over her spine, below the small of her back.

"Ooh, a man with a tramp stamp. Sexy," she teased, smiling her gorgeous smile.

"Mikaela, it's not mine to get," Sam protested.

"Sure it is," she replied. "It's your body, and you can't say that it wouldn't mean anything to you."

"Mikaela, I'm not an Autobot," Sam pointed out. "I'm human. It's not the same thing."

"Sam, people put things on and in their bodies all the time that don't mean anything to them or to anything else," she rebutted a little impatiently. "I mean, if it bothers you that much, ask permission or something."

"I... couldn't do that," Sam replied. The thought of asking Optimus about something _stupid_ like that... or even worse, if he did and maybe got told _no_....

"Well, that's just _prime_," Bumblebee played an audio clip. He reached over Mikaela, giant finger brushing gently over the hexagonal Cybertronian gylph that Sam had drawn on his forearm three months ago while trying to figure out what all the symbols in his head meant. Though the Sharpie markings should have long since washed off, they seemed burned into his skin, as indelible as any terrestrial tattoo.

The mark meant "key."

Bumblebee seemed to be searching for someone else's appropriate words for a moment, then found the ones he wanted. His hand moved to tap ever so lightly on Sam's lower back, over his spine. "You've earned it, kid," he said, using the voice of some actor Sam couldn't immediately identify. Then he switched to background singers from a rap song. "If you want it, baby you got it!"

* * *

The two-day stop at the atoll base had been far more fruitful than he had expected, the President thought, exhausted from the long hours of diplomacy but elated, as his plane winged its way back to Washington. Instead of simply viewing the Cybertronians as large, dangerous, heavily-armed invaders, they were now names to him, faces, histories. Medics, scholars, builders.

And bodyguards. He couldn't help but envy Sam Witwicky the pair of Pretenders that shadowed him. Though he hadn't understood quite _why_, ambassador and friend or not, the young man was still so valuable to the Autobots that he warranted three bodyguards to see him through his college education. Then Optimus had told him, in strictest confidence:

"I believe Sam does not yet realize it, but among us he holds the rank of a Prime," the ancient leader had intoned softly. "All the history and knowledge of our race are held within his mind. He is our link to our past, and here on Earth, our link to our future. The Decepticons--and Earth's governments--absolutely cannot be allowed to get their hands on him."

The President had felt like his eyes were crossing as he tried to absorb the importance of this... and also the importance of how much trust the Autobot was placing in him, telling him this, given his past choices. He'd felt staggered, and silently renewed his vow to treat these people, these refugees, more fairly than he had been. "He's that important to you?"

"He is," Optimus Prime said simply, "my brother. And the key to all of our futures."

* * *

Less than four hours after Air Force One had taken off, bearing the President in the opposite direction, a C-17 heading to California departed from Diego Garcia. Onboard were four humans passengers, two humanoids, a snazzy Camaro, and a radio-controlled truck who muttered about hating flying on these things and promptly went into stasis for the duration of the flight. Arcee, now bipartite instead of tripartite, had been reinstated for active duty with NEST and had thus stayed behind on the atoll. Given Ironhide's obvious affection for the femme, Sam had hidden his smiles and not said a word within the considerable hearing range of either.

He and Mikaela were returning home for Christmas with their families, and both Lennox and Epps had taken advantage of their rank (and the cargo plane heading to the right state) to call dibs on holidays with their wives and kids as well. Hound and Mirage, still assigned to Sam despite the President's offers for the both of them to join the Secret Service, were going with him to stay as guests at his parents' place. Sam was trusting the stay would be... educational, both for the Autobot pair and for his parents.

Lennox, Epps, Mikaela, and Mirage were playing a killer round of snap, with Hound looking on, as Sam wandered toward the fore of the cargo bay. Curiously, the robot didn't actually seem to be the one winning the round. Crouching down next to Hound, Sam observed this phenomenon and willed away the layered glyphs in his mind that tracked the cards and the probabilities and would make cheating all too easy for him. "She losing on purpose?" he murmured to Hound.

Hound breathed the suggestion of a laugh. "No. 'Raj just isn't very good at these types of games."

Sam raised an eyebrow. "Seriously? There can be things you guys aren't inherently better at than us humans?"

Hound turned his head to look at Sam. "Of course," he said, sounding surprised at the question. "Every species has its limitations, even ours. No one race has all things."

"If they did, they'd be a race of gods," Lennox commented, not taking his eyes off the game. He grinned toothily. "And where's the fun in that?"

"Ha," Epps retorted, eyes and hands also fast on the game. "World-building doesn't sound like too much fun to me. More like work."

"And on the seventh day he rested," Mikaela chimed in. "Ha!"

Sam applauded politely as Mikaela gloated at winning the round.

"You're not playing just to be polite or anything, are you?" Mikaela asked Mirage. "Because you don't have to. Or we could play another game instead."

"No." Mirage canted a smile toward her partner. "Just because I am not skilled at this, yet, doesn't mean I can't enjoy it."

"You want in, Sam?" Epps offered, scraping up the cards and shuffling them.

"I'll pass, thanks," Sam waved off the offer. He settled down and leaned back against the seating as a new round of cards was dealt around, watching the mixed species play the game. "You remember," he asked Hound after a few minutes of thought, "when you asked me if I thought it was possible for transformers to become more like humans?"

Hound looked at him curiously, but nodded. "Yeah."

"I'm not sure there's that much of a difference," Sam said, trying to sort out his thoughts into words that made sense. "Different hardware, sure, but the software?" The card game was slowing down to a pause to listen to him, who had the knowledge of two species stuck in his head. It made Sam want to roll his eyes; he wasn't some font of wisdom the way everyone seemed to think sometimes. "I don't think there's a difference between us. We all run on the same OS."

"You are such a geek, Sam," Mikaela teased, but there was no heat in her voice, only thoughtfulness echoing in her eyes.

He shrugged helplessly, smiling. "Gotta play to your strengths."

* * *

"Man, you thinkin' they're gonna be comin' back to let us down?" Mudflap asked his brother.

"Been a long time hangin' here," Skids sighed mournfully, looking at what they could see of the upside-down sunset (their third) through the open hanger doors.

"I'm about ready to kick me some Autobot ass as well as Decepticon," Mudflap raged, struggling ineffectually against the duct tape that bound him.

"I just know this is gonna ruin my paint job..." Skids said with a long face, ignoring his twin who looked not a little like a red caterpillar in a silver cocoon suspended from the rafters.

"I wanted to meet this Pre-see-dent!" Mudflap pouted.

"We all gonna to hang here 'til we rust...."

Outside the hanger, Ratchet and Ironhide stood side-by-side, listening to the whining coming from within.

"You're sure we can't just leave them there?" Ironhide rumbled.

"Unfortunately, yes," Ratchet replied.

"At least," Optimus said, coming up behind the two of them, "they were out of the way for sensitive political meetings. Thank you both for that."

"Any time," Ironhide replied. Ratchet stifled a smirk.

Optimus turned to look at the glorious oceanic sunset, one of the many beauties of this planet. Lacing his hands behind the small of his back, he stood silent for a moment, his men flanking him. "Miracles are too few to hope for," he finally said. "Nonetheless, I believe progress has been made in our acceptance on this planet. For that I would like to thank both of you."

"It was not a problem," Ratchet replied.

"Merry Christmas, Optimus," Ironhide said.

The robotic leader turned back to his men and smiled. "Yes. Merry Christmas, my friends."

* * *

A/N: Lots of thanks go to VAWitch aka OkamiMyrrhibis, who helped me hammer this chapter into a workable shape. Though this may be the last chapter of Simulacra, though given that it follows on from The Language of After and I have one more stand-alone to write (which ties in tangentially with Prime's assessment of Sam) I'm not done with this universe yet. ^_^


End file.
